Is formula feeding a feminist act?

[FeelLikeTweedleDee]

Excuse me as I'm high on Lemsip so my musings may seem unusual - I've been thinking about womens motivations for NOT breastfeeding.

Out of all the pregnant women I have spoken to who plan to formula feed from birth, the most common reason given is "I don't think it's fair that I should have to do all the feeds/shoulder all the responsibility for our baby's nutrition" which is an argument I can sympathise with. I understand the lactivists response: "there is so much more a man can do than feeding" but one must admit, feeding is pretty much the bulk of what a newborn needs. It also ties the mother to the baby in an exclusive manner which nappy changing, soothing, playing, etc does not.

I admit (online only because I'm a pussy) that women who chose not to breastfeed before even giving birth used to anger me. I couldn't understand why they would not put their baby's needs first. Why they wouldn't even give breastfeeding a shot? But perhaps sexual equality is sound reasoning?

What is your opinion on womens non-medical motivations for not breastfeeding?

If you're thinking "it's none of your business what feeding choices other mothers make", I disagree. Formula feeding costs the taxpayer a substantial sum every year re: NHS resources as well as its impact on the environment, etc. Thus womens non-medical reasons for not breastfeeding is an important issue.

And like motherinferior, I don't want to be revered for having functional ovaries.

You can be proud of your female status whilst ff too. My point about not being too quick to hand the baby over to dad if ff is linked to that I think. As said a million times over around here there are other ways to bond with a baby and dd actually gives dh a far more enthusiastic show of hands (literally) than I get!

Although 'female status' about a million miles from how I think on other things. I am a person and dh is a person and my mum is a person and my brother is a person etc etc. As a PERSON I also rail slightly against the total absorption of the mother into the baby whilst the father seems by society to be dealt an addition to previous identity rather than a removal of. I think the origins of this are more complicated than the bf/ff of a baby though.

Tiktok - had no idea re manufacturing of formula not in UK etc. Annoying.

Coldtits, I would never never never try to tell another mum how she "should" feed her baby- I hope you didn't get that from my post. I had plenty of friends who ff from day 1, and I had no problem with that- they had their reasons, some of which they explained, and some of which they didn't- I don't need to know. It is very much an invidual thing.

All I meant was that, for me, bf'ing was very empowering, and for that reason I find it hard to feel oppressed into it, and that choosing ff would have been a more "feminist" act

oh was it Tiktok? I will have to look.

There are other publications on feminism and breastfeeding, the occasional phd thesis on it etc, if you do a google search you can find various interesting articles.

Blimey! Hence the name I guess.

hmm..currently i am living on SMP & CTC/WTC - its fine up to 9 months but i can go back to work then and stil BF morning and night - i won't even get paid that much more after my return. low pay is actually an incentive to take the full 9mo off.

i am saving cash by BF.

urveyed attitudes to BF find very few women in predominantly BF cultures reporting feelings like those you often find on MN about the negative side of BF - which is not to say anyone is 'wrong' to feel that way, just that it could be different...

We are primates. Breast feeding is the natural, normal way to feed babies.

But (and it's a big but)

Chimps who can't deal with their offspring kill them. And nothing bad happens to them as a result.

Don't you think that people, human beings, who are punished for the killing of an infant that they cannot deal with, should be allowed to take the safest route OUT of the part they can't deal with?

jooly, yes, exactly how I felt/feel :)

I don't think it's a feminist act to bf/ff.

I do think feminists should support flexible return to work and other things that support women to bf.

I do think formula companies are anti feminist.

I am glad, in fact, that I breastfed my second baby exclusively till six months and went on breastfeeding till she was 18 months old. (I went back to work when she was four months old, but that was from home where it is easier to express as you have more privacy and, eventually, a very swishy double-pump, electric*.)

But it was grim, at the beginning.

*I had to test 14 different pumps for a feature I was writing. Probably the most bizarre thing I've ever had to do. But I got a nice freebie out of it.

See, it concerns me hat people treat this book as Gospel. or ANY book as gospel. I dread to hink how many times the words 'The politics of breastffeding says xxx' on this board.

Let me put this another way - I would treat anything the Daily Mail writes about Labour with caution. I would treat anything the Guardian writes about the Conservative with caution. I certainly would NOT use either publication to validate my bliefs on either party.

I'm not sure if its clear what i am tryin to say ... going to see if I can get a copy from teh local Libary.

yes but motherinferior bf is the early stages.

fennel- its republished and updated periodically. yes it covers feeding developed countries are part of a wider evaluation of feeding practices world wide and how the agressive marketing of formula has decreased the health and increased the birthrate world wide. however it also evaluates feeding in usa and the uk specifically and provide plenty of stats on the effect off ff on health here.

nothing much has changed since that book came out imo and the theory stands.

also the 'no clean water' issue with ff is a red herring. babies in deveolping countries get ill and die because they are not breastfed and therefore cannot fight all the germs present in reduced hygeine situations.

The two women I know who quit breastfeeding for family balance reasons both did it so they could make dinner/clean up/manage the house while their DH fed the baby. So I don't buy that FF is a feminist choice - it's a personal choice.

For us, my DH took on all the kitchen clean up so I could BF our sons. He still does that every night as it's become his 'job' so personally BF was a feminist activity for me.

But generalizations are rubbish - it will mean different things to different people and I do support women who do not like BFing and choose to FF. It's just one of many choices we make in our lives that all contribute to our kids upbringing.

i'm a rather selfish Bfer though.

a tactical BF means i often wiggle out of making the others their dinner....

Not religious then TW?
As a former historian I would agree with you. Everything has biased and biased is the enemy of truth. Not sure here though we are uncovering truths? Unless we are uncovering lots and lots of individual truths?

bias not biased. Time for bed.

Er...when I say the 'early stages' I mean the first six months.

I am not, it must be said, particularly nurturing. You want a good mother, you don't check the Inferiority Complex.

toddlerwrangler - absolutely - no book is gospel but really what agenda does the author have - its not as if she can get a sponsorship deal from it!

it is an academic text and it is fully referenced. its probably as reliable as a peer reviewed journal paper though im happy to be corrected.

'Good' mothers are not defined by their uteruses or breasts. They are defined by the millions of everyday experiences which make them mothers.

YES!!

Importing produce from countries undergoing famine is a very complex issue. Stopping doing this is not likely to make things better for these populations.
We could produce daughters strong enough to fend of societies demands, expectations and judgements. Daughters free enough to do as they goddamn wish all the goddamn time. Mostly just like we raise (have raised?) our sons to be.

Of course 'everything' is biased. The way for grown up intelligent people to deal with this is to see if an argument is backed up with credible research, and to see if the author(s) recognise their bias. The research might be biased, too, of course, so you then have to take this into account.

PofB is often cited on here because it is the only book that is academically respectable (in that it does cite credible research and comes from a lifetime of academic study and work in the field) and accessible to the general reader.

But of course it does spring from a view that in general, breastfeeding is good for the species, good for the planet, and good for all different types of societies....and that all these 'goods' can be, and have been, sabotaged by influences and structures that undermine breastfeeding.

If a reader is not of that view then they can read it and see how convincing or otherwise the argument is.

pommedeterre - apologies. I am a crap speller, proofreader and typer. Not a good mix on message boards!

sungirltan - to be honest, to a degree it is the books credability that concerns me. 'It says it in the PoBF so it must be true' type attitudes that prevent people from stopping to think, rationalise and question what they are reading in an objective manner.

I am of course talking in general terms about my concerns as I must read the thing. Who knows, it may well convert me!

I'm the same TW - was just making a little joke about religions and relying on one book as gospel.